Tears from Laventille hills

Will the heart of the PNM stronghold break rank and vote for change? There are the promises of houses, cable cars, more security posts and contracts. It is as if the people (chicken) are so hungry and starved that all one has to do is offer more goodies (corn).

I remember as if it were mere weeks ago my journey from Moruga at age 17 to start a new life in the city. I found accommodation on the top of St Paul Street, East Port-of-Spain at the St Martin’s Welfare Association. Within weeks I became aware of the Laventille community, a community in need of almost everything. The Association was headed by one George Bowen, known in the area as Brother Bowen. He endeavoured to assist the community by establishing trade schools, daycare, a meal on wheels programme for the poor and an elementary schools.

Within a year I established a youth department and took over many of the services to the community. It was at 18 while teaching my English Language class that it became very clear to me that the people of Laventille and surrounding communities were a neglected bunch.

Our group taught the children to play the guitar, we got the women in the community to teach others cake decorating, we took children by bus to the public pool in Chaguaramas to learn to swim and sought without any assistance whatever from government to make a positive impact on the lives of the people. I left the area at age 22 and had very little interaction with Laventille since then.

A few weeks ago I went up the hill again to St Martin’s Welfare Association, the surrounding buildings were riddled with bullet holes.

The Association trade classrooms are no more, the brave teachers who dare to venture up the hill are still trying to run a school for the children in the community. Brother Bowen is dead and the present President Frank Cooper is a very old man.

I looked and stared at another failed attempt to improve the lives of a community in neglect. A year or two ago an avid blogger and activist Karen Bath Alexander tried to get the public to see Laventille in a different light. She hosted a video presentation of Laventille at the Port-of-Spain Town Hall, showing the view from the hill and the many historical sites that are still there today. Unfortunately the Town hall was almost empty. No one really cares.

I remember one year after moving from St Paul Street to Erica Street and later to Upper Wharton Street that my small fledgling company sponsored a football team from Wharton Street to play in the community competition in Erica Street, the ground were filled with supporters every evening yet there was no one from the Sports Ministry Today the competition is no more, the sports rivalry has been replaced with gang rivalry and the cost is no longer pride it is the lives of our young people. Blood, tears, hunger, poverty, hopelessness, and crying...crying voices from the ghetto is the reality of Laventille today. Unless there is the political will to build sporting facilities, schools, universities, health institutions, government offices and factories in Laventille then the cycle of failed promises and despair will continue. God bless Laventille.

Steve Alvarez

via email